Ireland: Gradual increases in the level of Government aid to the Third World over the next three years should be outlined in the next Budget, the chairman of the Oireachtas Foreign Affairs Committee told a press conference in Dublin yesterday, writes Deaglán de Bréadún Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Dr Michael Woods TD said this was necessary to maintain confidence in the Government's commitment to increased aid and to ensure a planned approach to achieving the United Nations target of 0.7 per cent of Gross National Product in Overseas Development Assistance (ODA).
"Our present contribution is over €450 million or 0.41 per cent of GNP, which ranks us seventh worldwide," he said. He pointed out that Government spending estimates were being prepared at the present time.
Dr Woods was launching a special report by the committee on the situation in Ethiopia. He noted that Ireland was 12th in the UN's Human Development Index while Ethiopia was in 169th place.
"The contrast between Ireland and Ethiopia could not be greater," he said. "The average annual income per man, woman and child in Ireland is US$23,000 while in Ethiopia it is only US$100 per person."
This year alone, the Department of Foreign Affairs would make $30 million available to Ethiopia in food aid, to combat HIV/AIDS and other epidemics, and to promote educational opportunity.
The Labour TD, Mr Michael D. Higgins, said international investors had abandoned Africa. There needed to be "very significant reform" in the European Union's Common Agriculture Policy because of its effects on countries like Ethiopia.
Mr Tony Dempsey TD (Fianna Fáil) said the committee's report was a "road map" for what needed to be done on Ethiopia. "We were a poverty-stricken country a few years ago and we should try to learn from how we managed our affairs."
Like Ethiopia at present, Ireland in previous times had been very heavily dependent on agriculture. Now we were "a highly-productive country that can market its goods".
As a rural TD, he said one of the issues was to strike a balance between protecting livelihoods in his Wexford constituency, "and helping livelihoods in Ethiopia".
"We need to wage war on poverty with the same ferocity that we are prepared to wage war on perceived military enemies," Mr Dempsey said.